Focus on clashes in Kibera slum, Nairobi

After weeks marked by tension, violent clashes, killings, rioting and looting, residents of Kenya’s biggest slum, Kibera, have slowly begun rebuilding their lives. But even as an anxious calm returned this week, deep-rooted tensions remain in the sprawling suburb, home to hundreds of thousands of people. "Much as fighting has stopped, we are still afraid that violence might rear its ugly neck again," Rajab Karim, one of the residents, told IRIN on Wednesday. "The issue of house rents, which was at the centre of the clashes, has not found a lasting solution," he added. Early this week, riot police could be seen patrolling sections of the slum’s 10 villages: Soweto, Mashimoni, Silanga, Makina, Lindi, Kisumu Ndogo, Kianda, Laini Saba, Gatuikira and Gatekera. The violence which rocked Kibera was triggered by a feud between landlords and tenants over uncontrolled rents for slum dwellings in an overpopulated suburb with few services and amenities, and wholly inadequate water and sanitation. Tenants in Kibera are charged anything between 200 Kenya Shillings (KSh), about US $2.5, and Ksh 10,000 (about $128) per month, depending on the structure and location, according to residents of the area. Tension rose, in particular, after 31 October when President Daniel arap Moi directed the Nairobi provincial administration to explore ways of making Kibera landlords cut their rents. In Nairobi, an estimated 60 percent of the population survives in slums built on just 5 percent of the city's land area, the Daily Nation reported on Sunday. The city required a minimum of 25,000 new low-rent housing units each year but the government and Nairobi City Council had long ceased building houses, and the housing supply had sorely failed to meet demand, it said. After President Moi's speech, a good number of tenants in Kibera refused to pay rent, citing the president's remarks, on which he later expanded to say rents should be halved since landlords were offering only slum dwellings with little or no sanitation, on land which was owned by the government to begin with. According to one resident, some of Kibera's residents "took the president at his word" and vowed to halt rent payments until new guidelines were issued by Nairobi Provincial Commissioner (PC) Cyrus Maina. At least 12 people were reported killed and scores injured in the violent clashes which ensued, according to the independent Daily Nation newspaper. An estimated 3,000 people were displaced from Kibera and many others were rendered homeless when their houses were burnt or otherwise destroyed. However, few of the thousands of displaced who had camped at the Kibera district officer's compound during last week's fighting remained on Monday, the newspaper added. Kenyan police were heavily criticised for their handling of the violence. Armed policemen allegedly raided homes and shops, stole money and property, and it was police violence that caused many residents to flee their houses in the early hours of Thursday 29 November, Kenya Television Network (KTN) reported. Women's groups also accused police officers, as well as rioters, of raping dozens of people - a charge Nairobi police have denied. Analysts and media pundits in Kenya have suggested that the predominance of Nubians (originally from southern Sudan) among landlords in Kibera - having been settled there in the British colonial era - and of other tribes, particularly the Luo from western Kenya, among tenants has complicated the rent issue, adding to and cutting across other factors. Energy Minister Raila Odinga - accused along with President Moi of having incited the violence by calling publicly for rent cuts, and in whose Langata constituency Kibera is situated - has denied that the clashes had any ethnic basis, saying that such reports were based on ignorance and ethnic bias intended to discredit him ahead of general elections next year. Odinga said that landlords in Kibera included Kikuyus, Luos, Kambas and Kisii as well as Nubians, and that the issue of high rents affected tenants from many different ethnic groups. Matters in Kibera may not have been driven by but were not helped by tribalism, according to Ken Odeya, a middle-aged man who fled Kibera during the fighting. "At one point, the war degenerated to a duel between members of the Luo ethnic group and the Nubians," he told IRIN, vowing never to return to live in Kibera. Other factors playing out included absentee landlordism, insecure and disputed land tenure, urban migration and rapid population growth, inadequate urban planning and poor service delivery, alleged mismanagement of slum upgrading efforts, and the poverty and marginalisation of many of Kibera's residents, according to local media. Human rights activists on Monday identified the culture of impunity surrounding political violence and leaders' polarisation of people around tribal identities for political gain as key issues of concern in Kenya, the Catholic Information Services for Africa (CISA) reported. Participants at a human rights symposium in Nairobi, organised by Kenya Human Rights Commission, heard how tribalism had been trumpeted so much in Kenya that even urban areas had lost their shades of being metropolitan, and leaders had succeeded in some measure in getting Kenyans to think tribally, it stated. With the Kibera clashes occurring in Nairobi, the seat of government - as well as the intensity of recent violence in Tana River, eastern Kenya, in which more than 100 people have died this year - Kenyans were being newly confronted with the issue of violence in society and its serious implications, it added. "We know that the clashes were caused by politicians," Mary Atieno, a resident whose grocery store was set ablaze by marauding youths in Kibera, told IRIN. She said that the people who had terrorised Kibera were political hirelings from other slum areas. For 250 Kenyan Shillings (just over US$3) per day, these youths went flat out to kill and maim, Atieno said. She also discounted press reports that put the death toll from the recent clashes at 12, saying the number was considerably higher. "We were here and saw it; people died in their dozens. I reckon that almost 50 people were killed in the violence. Kibera has never been wracked by such ugly incidences of violence," she added. "Nobody is thinking of reconstructing the houses that were set ablaze because some of the residents have still refused to pay rent," said Abu Mohammed, a member of the Nubian ethnic community. Minister Raila Odinga said the government has established committees to represent landlords and tenants in negotiations on rent levels, in a mechanism intended to resolve the issue once and for all, the Daily Nations reported on Monday. He said these committees had started their work and were expected to be impartial in dealing with rent rises, which have ranged from 200 percent to 400 percent in the past year, it added. Assistant Minister in the Office of the President, William Ruto, told parliament on Thursday 29 November that the government was looking at instituting an arrangement under which property owners could be issued with title deeds, while tenants were able to benefit from rent reductions, Meanwhile, religious organisations have suggested that they and civil society groups have an important role to play. In a statement issued on Monday, nine key religious groupings proposed that they and other organisations working in the area offer their expertise and material assistance towards finding a lasting solution to the conflict. "We urge the government and the politicians to urgently facilitate the process of reconciliation, which is exhaustive and inclusive, to enable the warring parties to arrive at an amicable solution to the problem," they added. Among other initiatives to improve the lives of slum dwellers in Nairobi is the Collaborative Slum Upgrading Initiative, a joint effort by the Kenyan government and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). Currently at the stage of working on policies issues for these informal settlements, the project hopes to help improve the lives of close to 60 percent of Nairobi residents by 2006.