nach oben

Urban Forum

Erschienen in:

01.12.2012

Inside the System, Outside the Law: Operating the Matatu Sector in Nairobi

verfasst von: Jacob Rasmussen

Erschienen in: Urban Forum | Ausgabe 4/2012

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

This paper investigates the politics of public transportation in Nairobi by looking at the matatu sector. Focusing on the illegal Mungiki movement’s control of matatu routes, the paper provides an understanding of how the relationship between the state and the non-state plays out on the ground. The paper argues that the gaps in the state’s provision of services not only open up space for non-state interventions, but also invite mediation and brokerage between formal procedures and practical informal arrangements. It is argued that we can understand the ability to connect people and areas in the city—and how this helps make the city work—by looking at how everyday operations and practices constantly transgress notions of the formal and informal. This is best captured in the emic characterisation of the matatu sector as being inside the system, but outside the law.

Vorheriger Artikel Networked City Life in Africa: Introduction

Nächster Artikel “We Are Good at Surviving”: Street Hustling in Addis Ababa's Inner City

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Thomas Blom Hansen and Oscar Verkaaik argue for the important role of the taxi driver in postcolonial cities, as this ‘urban specialist’ connects different urban lifeworlds by crisscrossing the city and transgressing spatial, ethnic and class-based areas on a daily basis. Thus, the taxi driver is claimed to ‘know’ the city (Hansen and Verkaaik 2009, p. 21). This article focuses less on individual brokering in and across the city, and more on the role of the public transport sector as a collective and political force working in, on and across the city.

The paper is based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork on the Mungiki movement in Nairobi between September 2008 and March 2010. Fieldwork involved socialising with and interviewing members of the Mungiki movement, observation at matatu stages and market places next to the stages and riding in matatus with members involved in the business.

‘Buying a police officer tea’ is the colloquial phrase in Kenya for small bribes. The Swahili phrase ‘kitu kidogo’ (something small) is also frequently used to describe bribing. Ninety-three percent of the police are reported to have demanded bribes in 2008 (Abrahamsen and Williams: 2011, p. 202)

It is important to note that it is unknown whether the people operating the named vehicles are affiliated with the Mungiki movement. For similar examples of Matatu names, see Mungai’s 2010 article ‘hidden $ Centz’, the title being derived from the name of a matatu vehicle.

Throughout the paper, I distinguish between Mungiki as an organisation and Mungiki members as individuals who are part of an organisation. See also footnote 22.

My interlocutor mentioned Goldenberg and Grand Regency, two cases of multimillion Ksh corruption scandals, and the supposedly politically ordered raid on the Standard media group. Kenya is ranked no. 154 on the latest Transparency International corruption index, http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/#CountryResults (accessed 10 January 2012).

Kwendo Opanga, Daily Nation, 29 January 2004, quoted in Mutongi (2006: 262). Mutongi cites several commentators and intellectuals on pp. 262–263, as does Mungai (2007).

A recent documentary ‘The reluctant outlaw’ directed by Mike Healy and shown on Al Jazeera makes a similar point about corruption and crime. The main character, a matatu driver, states that the industry trains criminals and that if you fail to pay, you either end up in jail (at the hands of the police) or dead (by the hand of gangsters) http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2011/12/201112510241428663.html

The fare of three 10-cent coins—‘mangotole ihatu’ in Swahili—was shortened in daily use and gives the industry its present name (Lee-Smith 1989: 286; cf., Mungai 2010: 353).

MVOA (Matatu Vehicle Owners’ Association) was founded in 1979.

In the early 1980s, only one third of matatu vehicles were assigned to a terminal (Lee-Smith 1989).

MOA (Matatu Owners’ Association) was founded in 2003 as a substitute for the banned MVOA.

See, for example, ‘Matatu Owners give nod to Mungiki sect’, The People Daily, 10 November 2001; ‘Gangs in Terminus takeover attempt’, The People Daily, 30 January 2002; ‘Mungiki groups end Matatu termini row’, The People Daily, 2 February 2002.

More than 20 different vigilante groups, youth militias and criminal gangs were outlawed at the same time.

The Matatu workers formed their own association (Matatu Workers’ Association) after 2002.

On the evening of the protests, two human rights activist were shot dead. They had been central figures in collecting testimonies from relatives of victims of the extrajudicial killings. They had handed over their evidence to the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing on his visit to Kenya in February 2009.

For a detailed account of the routes, roads and neighbourhoods blocked, see Rasmussen (2010c).

For other examples of Mungiki matatu strikes paralysing Nairobi, see Anderson (2002: 538).

According to human rights reports, about 1,000 members have been killed or have disappeared between 2006 and 2009 (Oscar Foundation (2007) ‘The killing fields’ and (2008) ‘Veil of impunity’; Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (2008) ‘Cry of blood’; UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial Killings (2009) ‘Mission report from Kenya’).

The spokesman, Njuguna Githau, was shot dead in the late afternoon of 5 November 2009 in a shop in downtown Nairobi. His murder is still unsolved.

Mungiki’s story of how members have been recruited from the matatu sector into the movement echoes a central point from qualitative studies of gangs around the world: namely, that gangs are best understood if they are not viewed as entities separate from the rest of society, but approached rather as people within certain groupings with relations and lives outside the group and engaged in a variety of activities with little or no direct relation to the group (cf., Jensen 2008, p. 88; Hagedorn 2008).

One of Mungiki’s former leaders, Ndura Waruinge, claimed that Mungiki not only provided security at the matatu stages, but also ensured the smooth running of the routes (Turner and Brownhill 2001, p. 35).

Interview with the MOA national coordinator, Albert Karakacha, and national vice chairman, Stephen Murunga, 25 March 2009.

Some examples of newspaper accounts of the fees for operating matatus are: ‘More leaflets in Muranga’, Standard, 8 June 2007; ‘Traffic snarl up as Mungiki men demand levies’, The People Daily, 5 December 2007; ‘Mungiki tax system for business, use of roads’, Standard, 19 May 2009; ‘Why Mungiki will not relent in pursuing cash from matatus’, Nation,14 October 2009; ‘Extortion gangs demand more’, Nation, 16 May 2010; ‘The costly mess that the Matatu industry is’, Standard, 17 July 2010. Thanks to Katja Koch for filing and cataloguing the bundles of newspaper clippings on Mungiki.

Two Mungiki members working the nightshift as parking guards in Nairobi’s Eastlands tell me that guards get Ksh 3,000 per night for looking after 25 matatu vehicles. There are five guards working the shift, and they pay Ksh 1,000 to the owner of the parking lot before sharing the rest among themselves. Usually, each of them works three nights a week.

Other media and academic sources quote slightly different amounts for the fees. Examples are Katumanga (2005, p. 514) and Kagwanja (2005, pp. 68–69).

According to the route manager, there is a daily parking fee to the NCC of Ksh 150 plus some annual route allocation fees. MOA assists the matatu owners in their negotiations with Nairobi City Council (NCC) and the Transport Licensing Board.

I owe great thanks to my field assistant, anthropologist Wangui Kimari, for conducting additional interviews on the role of women in Mungiki to support my own material from conversations with female members. In addition to the donations, female members benefited from Mungiki’s control of the matatu routes by having access to transport for their goods and farm products to and from the market (see Brownhill and Turner 2004, p. 103).

After an unresolved break-in at the Standard media group, which had run a series of critical articles on Michuki and his political allies, Michuki is quoted as saying ‘when you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten’, which led to speculation that he was involved in planning the raid. BBC News, 3 March 2006.

BBC News, 23 March 2005, ‘Fury at Kenya shoot to kill order’.

For an elaboration of how Mungiki uses the narratives of such alleged meetings to gain political leverage, see Rasmussen (2010b).

Public secret is something publicly known, but which cannot easily be spoken of in public (Taussig 1999: 2).

Shortly after submitting the first draft of this paper, John Michuki died of a heart attack at the age of 80. At his death, Mungiki leaders said that Michuki might have ‘stepped on their toes’ in ordering the crackdown on the movement, but that they forgave him. Despite this polite language, Mungiki leaders insisted that they still expected justice for the extrajudicial killings committed during Michuki’s tenure as minister of internal security (Daily Nation, 22 February 2012). In the Standard’s eulogy of Michuki, he is described as brutal and ruthless towards Mungiki (Standard, 21 February 2012; Ombati and Njagi).

For an analysis of Mungiki’s Mau Mau heritage, see (Forthcoming) Rasmussen.

‘Police alert over Mungiki threat’, Standard, 30 March 2009; ‘Matatu drivers, conductors issue strike notice’, Standard, 2 April 2009; ‘Hundreds stranded as Matatu operators strike’, Standard, 7 April 2009.

Both Maupeu (2002) and Anderson (2002) argue that local vigilante groups in the poor areas of Nairobi may have been more powerful security operators on a local level than the Kenyan state. Maina Kiai, then chairman of Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights, has argued along similar lines (‘Providing security is State’s duty, not Mungiki’, Nation, 20 April 2008).

In their work on law and disorder in postcolonial societies, Jean and John Comaroff suggest that law and organised lawlessness coexist: in fact, they are conditions for each other’s existence (2006).

Since the conclusion of fieldwork, a number of infrastructural projects have been initiated in Nairobi with the aim of improving the road capacity and connectivity of the city.

Abrahamsen, R., & Williams, M. C. (2011). Security beyond the state: private security in international politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anangwe, A. (1995). Maintenance of law and order in western Kenya: the state and voluntary organizations. In J. Semboja & O. Therkildsen (Eds.), Service provision under stress in East Africa (pp. 105–120). London: James Currey.

Anderson, D. M. (2002). Vigilantes, violence and the politics of public order in Kenya. African Affairs, 101, 531–555.CrossRef

Bayart, J.-F. (1998). The state in Africa. The politics of the Belly. London: Longman.

Bayart, J.-F., Ellis, S., & Hibou, B. (1999). The criminalisation of the state in Africa. Oxford: James Currey.

Blundo, G., & Le Meur, P.-Y. (2009). Introduction: an anthropology of everyday governance. Collective service delivery and subject-making. In G. Blundo & P. Le Meur (Eds.), The governance of daily life in Africa ethnographic explorations of public and collective services. Brill: Leiden.

Branch, D. (2011). Kenya. Between hope and despair, 1963–2011. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Brownhill, L. S., & Turner, T. E. (2004). Feminism in the Mau Mau Resurgence. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 39(1–2), 95–117.CrossRef

Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2006). Law and disorder in the post-colony: an introduction. In J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff (Eds.), Law and disorder in the post-colony (pp. 1–56). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Gecaga, M. G. (2007). Religious movements and democratisation in Kenya: between the sacred and the profane. In G. R. Murunga & S. W. Nasong’o (Eds.), Kenya: the struggle for democracy (pp. 58–89). Dakar: Codesria Books.

Gilsenan, M. (1977). Against patron-client relations. In E. Gellner & J. Waterbury (Eds.), Patrons and clients in mediterranean societies (pp. 167–182). London: Duckworth Press.

Gimode, E. A. (2001). An anatomy of violent crime and insecurity in Kenya: the case of Nairobi 1985–1999. Africa Development, XXVI(1 and 2), 295–335.

Gupta, A. (1995). Blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics and the imagined state. American Ethnologist, 22(2), 375–402.CrossRef

Hagedorn, J. (2008). A world of gangs: armed young men and gansta culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Hansen, T. B., & Verkaaik, O. (2009). Introduction. Urban charisma: on everyday mythologies in the city. Critique of Anthropology, 29(5), 5–26.CrossRef

Jensen, S. (2008). Gangs, politics and dignity in Cape Town. Oxford: James Currey.

Kagwanja, P. M. (1998). Investing in asylum: Ethiopian forced migrants ant the Matatu industry in Nairobi. Les Cahiers de l’IFRA, 10, 51–69.

Kagwanja, P. M. (2003). Facing Mount Kenya or facing Mecca? The Mungiki, ethnic violence and the politics of the Moi succession in Kenya, 1987–2002. African Affairs, 102, 25–49.CrossRef

Kagwanja, P. M. (2005). Power to Uhuru: youth identity and generational politics in Kenya’s 2002 elections. African Affairs, 105(418), 51–75.CrossRef

Katumanga, M. (2005). A city under siege: banditry and modes of accumulation in Nairobi, 1991–2004. Review of African Political Economy, 106, 505–520.CrossRef

Kayongo-Male, D. (1988). Slum and squatter settlements in Kenya. In R. A. Obudho & C. C. Mhlanga (Eds.), Slum and squatter settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. Toward a planning strategy. Praeger: New York.

Khayesi, M. (1999). The struggle for regulatory and economic sphere of influence in matatu means of transport in Kenya: a stakeholder analysis. Paper presented at 6th international conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport, Cape Town, South Africa 19–23 September.

Kirsh, T., & Grätz, T. (2010). Vigilantism, state ontologies and encompassment: an introductory essay. In T. Kirsh & T. Grätz (Eds.), Domesticating vigilantism in Africa (pp. 1–25). Suffolk: James Currey.

Lee-Smith, D. (1989). Urban management in Nairobi: a case study of the Matatu mode of public transport. In R. Stren & R. White (Eds.), African cities in crisis. Managing rapid urban growth (pp. 276–304). London: Westview Press.

Lund, C. (2006). Introduction: twilight institutions. Development and Change, 37(4), 673–684.CrossRef

Maupeu, H. (2002). Physiologie d’un massacre: la tuerie du 3 mars 2002, Kariobangi North (Nairobi, Kenya). Annuaire de l’Afrique Orientale 2002, Paris.

Milliken, J., & Krause, K. (2002). State failure, state collapse, and state reconstruction: concepts, lessons and strategies. Development and Change, 33(5), 753–774.CrossRef

Muraya, P. W. K. (2004). Urban small-scale enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya. Habitat International, 30(1), 127–143.CrossRef

Mutongi, K. (2006). Thugs or entrepreneurs? Perceptions of matatu operators in Nairobi, 1970 to the present. Africa, 76(4), 549–568.CrossRef

Nafukho, F. M., & Hinton, B. E. (2003). Determining the relationship between drivers’ level of education, training, working conditions, and job performance in Kenya. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 14(3), 265–283.CrossRef

Nasong’o, S. (2007). Negotiating new rules of the game: social movements, civil society and the Kenyan transition. In G. R. Murunga & S. W. Nasong’o (Eds.), Kenya. The struggle for democracy (pp. 19–57). Dakar: Codesria Books.

Otiso, K. M. (2005). Colonial urbanisation and urban management in Kenya. In S. J. Salm & T. Falola (Eds.), African urban spaces in historical perspective (pp. 73–95). Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

Rasmussen, J. (2010a). Mungiki as Youth Movement: revolution, gender and generational politics in Nairobi, Kenya. Young. Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 18(3), 301–319.

Rasmussen, J. (2010b). Outwitting the professor of politics? Mungiki Narratives of political deception and their role in Kenyan politics. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 4(3), 435–449.CrossRef

Rasmussen, J. (2010c). The city is our forest! The affective urban politics of the Mungiki movement in Nairobi, Kenya. Africa Programme Report no. 6, Swedish National Defence College.

Rasmussen, J. (Fortcoming). We are the true blood of Mau Mau. In J. Hazen & D. Rodgers (Eds.), Global gangs. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Ruteere, M. (2008). Dilemmas of crime, human rights and the politics of Mungiki violence in Kenya. Nairobi: Kenya Human Rights Institute.

Ruteere, M., & Pommerolle, M.-E. (2003). Democratizing security or decentralizing repression? The ambiguities of community policing in Kenya. African Affairs, 102, 587–604.CrossRef

Simone, A. (2005). Introduction: urban processes and change. In A. Simone & A. Abouhani (Eds.), Urban Africa. Changing contours of survival in the city (pp. 1–28). Dakar: Codesria.

Simone, A. (2006). Pirate towns. Reworking social and symbolic infrastructures in Johannesburg and Douala. Urban Studies, 43(2), 357–370.CrossRef

Taussig, M. (1999). Defacement: public secrecy and the labor of the negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Thornton White, L. W., Silberman, L., & Anderson, P. R. (1948). Nairobi. Masterplan for a colonial capital. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office.

Throup, D., & Hornsby, C. (1998). Multi-party politics in Kenya. Oxford: James Currey.

Totolo, E. (2008). Kenya: the Mungiki mess. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/currentaffairs/security-watch-archive/detail/?id = 938611andtitle = kenya:themungikimess/. Accessed 10 January 2012.

Turner, T. E., & Brownhill, L. S. (2001). African jubilee: Mau Mau resurgence and the fight for fertility in Kenyan 1986–2002. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, XXII, 1037–1088.

Wa Mungai, M. (2007). “Kaa Masaa, Grapple with Spiders”: the myriad Threads of Nairobi Matatu discourse. In J. Ogude & J. Nyairo (Eds.), Urban legends, colonial myths: popular culture and literature in East Africa (pp. 25–58). Asmara: Africa World Press.

Wa Mungai, M. (2010). Hidden $ Centz. Rolling the wheels of Nairobi Matatu. In H. Charton-Bigot & D. Rodriguez-Torres (Eds.), Nairobi today: the paradox of a fragmented city (pp. 351–364). Nairobi: IFRA.

Wa Mungai, M., & Samper, D. A. (2006). “No mercy, no remorse”: personal experience narratives about public passenger transportation in Nairobi, Kenya. Africa Today, 52(3), 51–81.CrossRef

Titel: Inside the System, Outside the Law: Operating the Matatu Sector in Nairobi
verfasst von: Jacob Rasmussen
Publikationsdatum: 01.12.2012
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Urban Forum / Ausgabe 4/2012
Print ISSN: 1015-3802
Elektronische ISSN: 1874-6330
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-012-9171-z

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 4/2012

Traders, Drivers and the National Health Insurance Scheme in Small Town Ghana

Urban Livelihoods and Social Networks: Emerging Relations in Informal Recycling in Kaduna, Nigeria

Urban Governance Beyond the State: Practices of Informal Urban Regulation in the City of Goma, Eastern D.R. Congo

The Prestige Economy: Veteran Clubs and Youngmen’s Competition in Bamenda, Cameroon

Networked City Life in Africa: Introduction

Engineering a Millennium City in Accra, Ghana: The Old Fadama Intractable Issue