* REPORT : 17

Building the Kenyan links

KOROKOCHO -NAIROBI
Zimbabwe Exchange to Kenya.

By Beth Chitekwe

Day One 17/7/01
The enumeration was scheduled to start today. However there are some problems in the area of Korokocho. Korokocho is a settlement estimated to have over 200 000 people. It is made up of seven villages and it is the biggest slum in Nairobi. People have lived in this settlement for up to thirty years. Land is owned by the government but people popularly known as structure owners are the ones who are in control.

In December President Moi announced that he had given this land to the residents of Korokocho. After a visit to India, the Provincial Commissioner for Nairobi was convinced the way to resolve some of the land issue would be to carry out an enumeration of the settlement first.

Structure owners have resisted this move because they felt they would loose control of the land as well as rentals from the tenants. One structure owner can own up to 10 structures. The exercise was seen as a prerequisite for allocation. A committee made up of both structure owners and tenants was established in the area with the help of Pamoja.

The process so far has sought to reach a consensus amongst the various players including the involvement of the Provincial Commissioner who is key in the eventual allocation of the land. There has been some rumors that an organized group - Korokocho Owners Welfare Association (KOWA) is vehemently opposed to the process and they have even issued death threats. By the end of the day it was clear that the exercise would not start as the Provincial Commissioner had just told Pamoja that he had been served with a Court Order by KOWA to halt the exercise.

In the afternoon when we met the committee from Korokocho they showed that they mistrusted the Provincial Commissioner and felt that his failure to provide security for the exercise in light of the threats was an indication that he was on the side of the KOWA. They were adamant that they would go ahead even if the Provincial Commissioner did not come on board, as they had nothing to loose.

Our Observation
I felt that Pamoja should invest more in building a federation process in these settlements so that the affected are at the forefront in these negotiations. The Muungano people who were involved in the last enumeration in Huruma were not part of this process as it was felt within Pamoja that they had been misrepresenting the information. Pamoja mistrusted the Muungano as it was made up of mainly structure owners. We felt that if they had been problems in Huruma they, Pamoja, should have discussed these openly with Muungano rather than to completely leave them out.

We were also questioning Pamoja’s commitment to a Federation process, as this did not seem to be the driving force behind their interventions. For example the enumeration in Korokocho is being seen more as a pre-requisite for the allocation of land rather than as a mobilizing tool for people to come together and collectively solve their own problems. This maybe is the reason for the obvious conflict. Also the people do not control the process and while Pamoja is seen by the tenants to be working for them they are seen as a threat by KOWA. We suggested that the process should really be aimed more at mobilizing people so that they play a more significant role in the land discussions within Korokocho. However Pamoja’s position is that the issue of the land came before the Korokocho had joined in with Muungano. They felt they had to seize the opportunity and do something quickly before all the land is allocated to structure owners and the tenants loose out.

The concept that poor women will talk through the process if saving and exchanging ideas at community level does not seem to have been bought here. We will try to steer the enumeration process to involve the women in the community more and get them to establish saving schemes. Our worry is if the current situation prevails and the Committee fails to deliver the land then there is nothing that will hold this community together. Promoting saving schemes would achieve this and also if the land negotiations fail then at least the people will own this loss and not blame Pamoja. Saving schemes would mean people have something they can hold on to, that they have control over and that is not dependent on outside forces.

Day 2 18/07/01
The Indians arrive. We have another briefing meeting at Pamoja. Jane, Davious and I leave to meet with the Provincial Commissioner. We do not see him but the Provincial Commissioner agrees to meet with the whole group later in the day. In the meantime the elected committee had been to see several councilors and MPs to get a clearer position on the issue with the Court order and also drum up support for the enumeration process.

At 5.PM we meet with the Provincial Commissioner who welcomes us and explains in some great detail the situation at hand. In the meantime Jane had established that the Court Order does not prohibit the enumeration taking place but rather seeks to legitimize the claim of KOWA as well prevent demolishers and development in the area. In the meeting with the Provincial Commissioner he explains that he is concerned that if there were any violence in the area the issue would take international repercussions. He therefore suggest that the visiting team should not get involved and would also be useful in helping to restrain the elected committee which was getting impatient and agitated at KOWA’s continued efforts to block the enumeration. So in the end it was agreed that the elected committee and Pamoja would go ahead with the enumeration and the Provincial Commissioner would provide security for the exercise. The District Officer for the area would hold a meeting with the community to tell them that the enumeration would go ahead. We observe that the Provincial Commissioner and the elected committee would like to see development-taking place. However the process of the enumeration seems to be viewed as a Government exercise and this might also be a factor in the current tensions. We tried again to voice concern about the focus of the enumeration to place more emphasis on mobilizing the community. However the Indians and Pamoja feel that the situation at hand requires action now and that the enumeration should go on with the current focus.

Day 3 19/7/01
We hold another meeting with the elected committee to strategise on the enumeration. The committee informs us that they have 140 people ready to start the enumeration. These teams will start with numbering the houses to test the waters on Friday. They will try and ensure that every house is numbered even those that will refuse will be counted by proxy where a number will be skipped for every house whose owner refuses to be numbered. The next stage will then be to administer the questionnaire. The elected committee is keen to start. Jockin emphasis the need to ensure that the enumeration takes place as this will be the only victory that the tenants and those structure owners that have chosen to work with the elected committee can take. This will therefore require that people restrain themselves.

In the afternoon we go to Korokocho to meet with the committee after the District Officer had addressed the committee. We are met by an angry mob of structure owners and have to be escorted out of the settlement by armed policeman. The situation is obviously very tense as a result of the District Officer’s announcement that the enumeration should go ahead.

Day 4 20/7/01
We split into two groups. Lungu and I stay with Pamoja while Davious visits a project previously supported by Water Aid - Maji wausafiri who are supporting a group called Ushirika.

Ushirika wausafiri own and control the project established by Maju wausafiri. They manage the tanks, promote hygiene and sell water within the community of Kibera, a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Kibera is divided into four villages. Maji wausafiri funds the installation of the bulk supply pipes. The Local authority in the area does not provide water to the settlement. So Maji wausafiri has funded a connection from the Council lines and created a distribution network where tanks for storage as well as meters are installed. A 20l cost 2 KS. At the water point there is a water seller and then there are collectors who collect whatever amounts will have been made and these are then banked with a single treasurer once every week.

Ushirika has plans to build toilets. At the moment people use the open spaces as well as plastic bags that they throw willy-nilly. Currently land is the problem, as government owns the land, they have set aside KS137 000. There are currently clearing a piece of land that had been grabbed by the local chief for their community hall. They have had exchanges with Mombassa’s Ilishe Trust and India and they have introduced saving schemes that work differently to the Zimbabwean or South African saving schemes. Their aim is to give each other loans for housing.

Huruma
Lungu and I visited Huruma the community where Pamoja trust organized an enumeration in May. There were representative from the seven villages of Huruma. There were also people visiting from Timau who have just been evicted from their land. They were in Nairobi to link with Pamoja Trust and also investigate the ownership of the land at the Deeds office. All the groups have been saving from last year and have all opened bank accounts but they are all struggling with the notion of loans. We talked a bit about the benefits of loans. They will be discussing these within their saving schemes.

We also discussed the last enumeration and the need for people in Huruma to show solidarity with the people in Korokocho. They felt that they could not go to Korokocho, as the situation was too tense. They could not relate to the Korokocho people, as they have never been linked together. There also discussed the enumeration findings. They felt that some structure owners had misrepresented the situation and they were prepared to redo the exercise.

We then went to meet the Korokocho committee. Together with the 120 extra enumerators they had been locked in a room for over three hours with demonstrators outside. The demonstration only subsided after the police sent in 200 police officers. They then managed to carry on the enumeration and by the end of the day they had managed to complete 565 questionnaires. They would go on the next day but they felt they needed more security as they were scared KOWA would regroup the next day.

In the evening we sit with the Pamoja Trust people and agreed that the enumeration would go on the next day. There was need to try and mobilize more enumerators as the exercise went on. They would try and number all the houses first and then do the questionnaires.

Our observations
The Kenyan land issue is very complex. The focus within Pamoja is land rights. There is a general acceptance that savings need to be emphasized more but we did not get the sense that this was a priority.

The current issue in Korokocho has highlighted some potential complex issues in relation to Pamoja’s budding alliance with Government agencies. Generally people do not trust Government agencies. This has been due to years of corruption at the highest level. We felt therefore that it was even more important for Pamoja to invest more in building a strong Federation that would negotiate with local agencies directly without needing an intermediary. There is also need for Pamoja to emphasis savings. The groups in Huruma show that it is possible to mobilize people around savings. It would possibly have been a lot easier to deal with the Korokocho community if they had been networked with the other groups that Pamoja is working with in Nairobi. The enumeration focus should also be to mobilize the community as well address the land issue. Davious and Lungu also felt that Pamoja should be investing in building an independent community leadership. Some of the tasks carried out by Pamoja employees can be done more effectively by the Muungano. Pamoja could use Huruma to mobilize other areas around savings.

The Zimbabweans contribution to the Kenyan process could be by saturation the communities in Kenya with exchanges in the region. It would be necessary however to also ensure that the key Pamoja people like Scola, Salma, Lawrence and Gitau are also exposed to how other NGOs work with the federations in their countries.