Reading the absolutely fascinating history of Sudanese settlement in Kibera, Kibra is Our Blood, and more generally the bizarre land policies of the British Colonial administration (listed on Brian’s excellent Kibera bibliography. The names of familiar places and some of the parallel world might-have-beens spin out thoughts of historical digital mapping of this article, to visualize this incredible history, parallel to some of the techniques I’m hacking on to deal with new Map Kibera data … scanning colonial era maps and rectifying, linking text to OpenStreetMap objects, or rather to OpenHistoricalMap.
The article makes clear the roots of Kibera’s present situation in ambiguous and confusing land tenure and the formal city’s dependency on marginalized populations; the contentious issues are strikingly familiar. It’s an article, among many about Kibera, that people in Kibera should have to read and understand. Some standout quotes to me…
Comparing Kibera’s standing to other historic informal settlements. (p. 91)
It is interesting to compare the resiliency of Kibera to the fate of Kileleshwa, a neighborhood of Nairobi that is now solidly upper-class but in the 1920’s was another informal settlement of “detribalized Natives”….Without the protection of military patronage, the African residents of Kileleshwa could do little to stand up to their influential European neighbors, who complained that the Native settlement was a breeding ground for crime and disease. In 1927, the location’s entire population was evicted forcibly under the “Resident Natives Ordinance”.
On the failed idea to settle Nubian’s to what is now Nairobi National Park. (p. 93)
In 1931, the game warden of Nairobi protested the proposal to settle the Sudanese on the Nairobi Commonage because it was the only part of the Southern Game Reserve that did not belong to the Maasai, and as such it was the only practical site in the entire region for a game sanctuary … the preservation of wildlife won out over the interests of the Kiberan Sudanese, and the Nairobi Commonage is known today as Nairobi National Park.
Addressing schemes in Kibera have long been protested. Does it all come down to who is doing the numbering? (p.94)
Kiberans holding legal residence permits received round metal door plates stamped with the letters “KAR” and numbered from 1-350 … Many rejected the registration discs as an insulting form of “kipande” (labor registration).
On a request for “community policing”, in an increasingly crime ridden 1930s Kibera, especially the illegal brewing of “Nubian Gin”. (p. 98)
This request highlighted the ambiguous position of the Sudanese in Kenya. As “detribalized Natives” and former servents of the government, they were able to secure a privileged position in Kibera, but, on the other hand, their “detribalized status” also menat that they lacked officially recognized “traditional authorities” through which to control their community.
The denial of services to Kibera, again flimsily justified by the brewing of illegal “Nubian Gin”. (p. 103)
The government therefore turned down the community’s request for a permanent water supply, and instead offered to assist any resident to move to a different Native location where there was water. Thus, by the close of the decade, the Sudanese had fended off the government’s attempts to either move them or regulate their lives more closely at the cost of their quality of life. The administration began a policy of what can only be considered malicious neglect in an attempt to force the Sudanese out by rendering Kibera unlivable.
The economic opportunities of informal settlements…(p. 108)
Their prosperity was also, however, due to the unregulated status of Kibera, which created lucrative commercial opportunities. Outside the jurisdication of the Livestock Control Board, its butchers sold cheaper, uninspected, and uncontrolled meat. Moreover, the explosion in Nairobi’s African urban population in the later half of the 1940’s provided lucrative real estate opportunities as the Sudanese rented rooms to prostitutes, labor migrants and other non-Sudanese Africans who drifted into Nairobi.
Ethnic relations have long been fluid. (p. 114)
Yet it appears that the Sudanese were not as isolated from the rest of the African community as they claimed to be. While the Kibera Survey declared that the Kibera Sudanese rarely intermarried with other ethnic groups, there is strong evidence to indicate that Sudanese community was much more open than they officially admitted. Most Sudanese came to Kenya as part of military expeditions, with limited opportunities to bring Sudanese women with them. While there were cases where veterans returned to the Sudan to find wives, many married women from Kenyan ethnic groups.
With the near coming of Independence, the ongoing struggle and political football between the military, colonial administration, and Nairobi city council, started to wipe the slate clean. The Ministry of Housing introduced plans to house 75,000 residents in Kibera, but only five model homes were built in Kibera. Wonder if these still exist. (p.120) Toward the end, the Nubians increasingly aligned themselves with the British, as a new Kenyan government would not recognize their military debts.
Great article, its very hard to find the historical past of modern day neighbourhoods in Nairobi, as a resident of Kileleshwa im amazed that in the 1920s it was just another informal settlement and how events have shaped it to be what it is now in these modern times. You rarely hear about Nubians these days unless in the context of Kibera, they really need more recognition and visibility,
very interesting mention of the first government investment in Kibera came in the 1950s when the colonial administration was keen to shore up support from loyal ethnic groups. They built a a school, which our mappers think is probably Old Kibera Primary, and invited veterens of the Kings African Rifles (KAR) who had served the Crown since the late 1800s in Juba, WWI and WWII.
When independence hit, it was no longer valuable to be identified as Sudanese, so they group transformed their identity into Nubians, and began to claim rights as any Kenyan ethnic group