Squatting in Kenya

Squatting in Kenya is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner.

History

During colonial occupation, white settlers took the most fertile land such as the White Highlands and indigenous peoples were moved into reserves. For example the Kikuyu people had most of their land confiscated and by 1948, 1.25 million Kikuyus were confined to 5,200 km² and 30,000 settlers occupied 31,000 km². Kenyan labourers who worked for white settlers were permitted a small amount of land where they lived and grew food. By the 1920s, these labourers had become known as "squatters". Some Kikuyu squatters moved to the Rift Valley because the land was more fertile than where they had previously lived and also settlers protected the men from conscription. Crops included coffee, tea and pyrethrum. Tabitha Kanogo argues in Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905-63 that in the Rift Valley Province the settlers needed labourers and the squatters also wanted land to farm, so "each group needed to exploit the resources controlled by the other". She notes that alongside the squatting system there was also illegal squatting and so-called Kaffir farming, in which labourers paid the settlers to use their land. In 1910, there were 20,000 Kikuyu Kaffir farmers and during World War I, the labourers maintained the farms on behalf of the settlers.

The 1918 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance was brought in as an attempt to regulate illegal squatting and to control labourers, with measures such as the abolition of Kaffir farming and the insistence that labourers must work at least 180 days in the year at a specific farm. Labourers reacted by going on strike, leaving their jobs, engaging in sabotage and starting to squat illegally. Settler attempts to control the squatters culminated in the 1937 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance, which stated squatters only had rights to live in the White Highlands when allowed by a settler and enforced a limit on how much squatters could farm. Whilst World War II slowed its implementation, in the late 1940s its effects were felt and labourers were forced to organise in groups such as the Kikuyu Highlands Squatters Association.

As of 1945, there were over 200,000 licensed squatters in the White Highlands and over half were Kikuyu. Following incidents such as the Olenguruone crisis, the Mau Mau rebellion began amongst squatters in the late 1940s and by September 1952, 412 people had been jailed for allegedly being part of the insurrection. The events led to a forced displacement of squatters from the White Highlands to reserves and there was a period of armed struggle between 1952 and 1956. After independence in the early 1960s, peasants started squatting land in rural areas in the centre of the country and on the coast. In recent years, community groups including indigenous peoples and squatters have challenged agricultural companies such as Del Monte Kenya and Kakuzi Limited over land they regard as belonging to them folling the foundation of the National Land Commission in 2012.

21st-century

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) estimated in 2007 that 55 per cent of Kenya's urban population lived in slums, in which people either owned, rented or squatted their houses. As of 2019, 4.39 million people lived in the capital Nairobi and around half lived in informal settlements, occupying just 1 per cent of the city's land. Many slums (for example Huruma, Kibera and Mathare) were clustered in a belt around 4 km from the Central Business District. Research in 2020 using Geographic information system (GIS) technology suggested the population of Kibera was around 283,000, lower than mainstream media estimates; the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) had previously estimated there to be between 300,000 and 1 million inhabitants. Mathare is a collection of squatted villages in the valley of the Mathare River, which were founded in the 1960s. GIS analysis was also used to plot occupations in the Chyulu Hills, where squatters have come into conflict with conservationists.