A New Generation of Ideas
“informal,” is better described as a dynamic site of negotiated extralegality. Moreover, rather than being a homogenous space (and therefore reducible to one housing market), Kibera is a settlement with thirteen villages, a sloped topography, varied densities and living conditions, a geotribal landscape, and a deep and contested history in the city of Nairobi (Omenya and Huchzermeyer 2006; UN-Habitat 2003). In 1904, Kibera was a remote and forested military training ground sparsely settled by Sudanese ex-soldiers of the British Crown. Kibera was seen as a repository for the unfit or unneeded detribalized natives and later tenants of the Crown to whom they owed some form of accommodation (COHRE 2006, 22). By 1912, the King’s African Rifles officially sanctioned the residency of the soldiers in what became known as the King’s African Rifles shambas and granted them temporary occupation of Kibera, distributing passes that gave former soldiers and their families the right to erect temporary structures (Parsons 1997, 90). The terms and intent of this agreement were not clear and became progressively vaguer. The soldiers believed that such allocation was a permanent right in return for their service (and was thus transferable to their children); however, the administration believed that accommodation was only owed to those who had directly served in the army and that when the people died, Kibera could be reclaimed (de Smedt 2011, 10). Military law governed Kibera for some time, allowing the area to maintain “extramunicipal status”; however, this victory was partial as the colonial administration refused to develop the area, fearing that it would attract more settlers (Parson 1997, 107). Ironically, the military authority controlled migration into the settlement while allowing the deregulation of activities (e.g., brewing and prostitution) within it. However, in the shift to civil law in 1928, Kibera emerged as an ungovernable and administrative “gray area” because it lacked both “direct European administration and any form of traditional authority through which the government could rule indirectly”; in this way, the settlement expanded rapidly (Parson 1997, 92). What had previously been sanctioned now became illegal; however, through various bouts of collective action and resistance and violence, the residents fought for their right to continue the livelihoods that depended on the local markets for rental accommodations and gin (de Smedt 2011b, 11). Perhaps, in addition to that of negotiation and resistance, Kibera’s history tells a more nuanced story of the contingent nature of legal enforcement | 127 |