Violent clash over rent that claimed thirteen lives

By Beatrice Wamuyu

Kenya has witnessed violent clashes over rent. But nothing matches the bloodshed that unfolded in Mathare on June 3, 2003.

Like ghosts in the early morning, tenants and slum residents attacked a group of men sent to evict them. By the time they were through, 13 young men lay dead, killed with axes, machetes and batons.

Mathare, one of Nairobi’s poorest neighbourhoods, is a sprawling ghetto that is home to the unemployed, thieves, and honest Kenyans struggling to make a clean living. Bars line some of its narrow streets and so do tuck shops, grocery stores, dealers in secondhand clothes, and pickpockets.

Life is nothing but one long, unpromising hardship. It is estimated to shelter 500,000 souls, the city’s poorest. Bloodshed during clashes between eviction squads, illegal gangs such as the Mungiki and the police, has made it one of Nairobi’s saddest slums. An entire neighbourhood of the slum was razed to the ground during the 2008 post-election chaos as gangs from different communities battled each other with crude weapons.

Back to the 2003 eviction massacre.  Mathare is actually a collection of several slums separated by rows of rusty tin shacks. Some “wealthy” areas feature buildings made with concrete.

To social observers, the violence was a result of poverty left to fester for decades with little effort to provide jobs or decent shelter. As a result, the wedge between the rich and the poor has been widening, and Kenya is today ranked among the world’s most unequal societies.

A dispute had been simmering between the landlord and the tenants. While some Kenyans can afford rent upwards of Sh200,000 per month, the tenants of Mathare wanted the monthly charge reduced from Sh2,000 and Sh2,500 to Sh1,500.

The landlord disagreed. He ordered them to leave the building if they could not afford to pay. But the tenants were not agreeable either.

So he hired about 100 young men to force them out. The group left Githunguri in Kiambu, approximately 50km from the city, at 3.00am. One of their vehicles broke down hence delaying their mission slated for early dawn.

As soon as the eviction squad entered the building ready to throw out the tenants, it was surrounded by armed thugs. They were trapped with no escape route. Ten died on the spot and three others on the way to hospital.

The horrible episode lasted for about 30 minutes. Two men trying to save their lives jumped from the six-storey building, only to hasten their deaths.

Police Commissioner Edwin Nyasenda reported 10 deaths but workers at the City Mortuary told local dailies that they booked 13 bodies.

“The man ferried us from Githunguri town in a lorry and brought us to the city. We were given crow bars, hammers and metal bars to break doors,” said a survivor of the mayhem, Peter Njue Mungai.

“He wanted us to remove doors only and not to touch the property of the tenants. The landlord’s son walked in front of us pointing out the doors of the tenants who had not paid rent.”

They managed to pull down ten doors on the first and second floors, which they threw into the houses.

“As we were proceeding to the third floor, we heard a crowd screaming outside, baying for our blood. It was every man for himself when we realised we were trapped.”

The police finally came to rescue the youths. They fired into the air and lobbed tear gas canisters as the attacking mob receded. They managed to rescue 42 of them. Two of the landlord’s sons were reportedly giving orders to the young men carrying out the eviction. They were guarded by police who had accompanied them from Kasarani Police Station.

In an indication of how heartless some Kenyans had become, the tenants broke into loud cheers, songs and dances as the bodies of the dead were loaded into a truck to be taken to the mortuary.

 “Why have Kenyans lost value in human life? They can butcher each other and shed no tears for what they have done. This is a grisly scene,” a senior policeman commented.

The surviving youth were made to walk in a single file with their hands raised up. Police formed a barricade to stop the tenants from attacking them.

“The residents tried to gang up against the officers and prevent us from making arrests but we stood firm,” said Kasarani division police chief James Kirimi.

Was the rent war political? Some said it was. The then Internal Security Minister Chris Murungaru blamed it on utterances by politicians he did not name. Whether that incident was political or not, Mathare has since witnessed more political violence such as the 2008 post election violence, and during crackdowns on gangs said to have political connections.