Slums and shelter policies in Kenya: the case of Kibera, Soweto East slum upgrading project

The project is quite simple in its general concept. It consists in relocating all Soweto East residents to a decanting site built ad-hoc by the GoK in four turns (the decanting site is constituted by 600 three-rooms apartments, which is supposed to accommodate 1800 households at maximum). In the meanwhile the structures in the village will be demolished and replaced by modern high-rise buildings, which the beneficiaries are supposed to buy in 15-20 years with the help of some cooperatives. Hence, the first thing to consider is that it's not slum upgrading in the sense of UN-Habitat's best practise, but rather redevelopment: there is no the simple provision of basic infrastructure by the authorities and progressive improvement of the structures directly by the beneficiaries, but just the replacement of the old dwellings with modern five-storeys apartments.
Rumours about upgrading projects in Kibera have been circulating for years, but nothing really had ever happened before. The only time in which something eventually occurred was with the construction of Nyayo high-rise estate in the 90s, which rises just behind a wall (the Berlin Wall - Interview with Patrick, representative of the tenants in the SEC: the wall which separates the slum from the estate is the symbol of a project which is still fresh in the minds of Soweto's residents, who were cheated and deceived. The name Berlin wall is used in a negative and disparaging acceptation, 7th July 2009) delimiting Soweto East at south-east. But as already discussed, the project ended up to benefit wealthier people from the outside, rather than people from Kibera, as promised. This is the reason why probably very few really believed that something different would happen when the enumeration of the resident started in 2004.
The enumeration has been the first step undertaken for the project realization, conducted together with the survey for the physical mapping with the objective of individuating the target group, that is, every resident of the village. Every structure has been enumerated and assigned a code indicating the zone (Soweto East has been divided in 4 areas (A, B, C, D) for the project purpose), the structure number, the ownership unit and the room, written somewhere on every shack. In the same time an ID has been issued to every household head, as the guarantee of being part of the process and hence entitled of benefiting from the project. The main issue related to such enumeration is the fact that it is 5 years old, and the photography taken at that time doesn't reflect the current situation any more, since in the meanwhile many people have moved, formed a new family or even died. As a result many current residents, who have come to Soweto East after the enumeration, will not be included in the process.
In order to grant community participation the SEC (Settlement Executive Committee) has been formed through elections, gathering 18 representatives of different interest groups of the community (tenants, landlords, women, youth, CBOs, disables, orphans). The role of such committee is bridging between the community and the coordinating agencies (GoK and UN-Habitat, hereinafter referred to as “the implementers”): on one hand, it should take the requests and the opinions of the community to the implementers, playing a role of mouth-piece for the community; on the other hand, it should transmit and diffuse the informations and the decisions taken upstream to the community and encourage its participation. But it seems that the functioning of the SEC is not very much effective, and participation of residents is extremely limited, especially for the fact that the contribution by the community in the planning of the project is completely non-existent, since the project in its main components -as described above- has been decided at the table substantially by the GoK. Many voices from different stakeholders and simple community members have also expressed very severe critics with respect to the SEC's work and to the effective role of representation that it is playing*. The most striking aspect of this malfunctioning is the difficulty to access many informations, which seem to be hidden and kept secret by few informed people, in a general climate of suspicion and silence that is the symptom of something wrong in the process. Transparency should be a basic requisite of every project aiming at defining itself participatory and democratic, promoting a wide partnership and creating a sense of belonging for the beneficiaries.