Meet first Shona woman graduate in Kenya who fights for stateless people

Nosizi Reuben Dube has always been a top performer in school. But unlike other students, her transition to the next level has always been a battle.

Born into the stateless Shona community in Kenya, she did not have the crucial documents like an Identity Card or Birth Certificate to register for examinations.

“Some of these documents that many take for granted, for us and many other stateless communities, are a matter of life and death,” says the soft-spoken woman.

On September 20, 2024, she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, bringing joy not only to her family but also to the community.

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Dube will travel to Geneva, Switzerland, this Saturday, for the global launch of the Campaign against Statelessness, an initiative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Born 20 years ago in Kinoo, Kiambu County, Dube’s greatest fear was early marriage. Though she loved education, she knew her parents, like many members of the Shona community, could not afford it.

The Shona people arrived in Kenya from what was then Rhodesia ­– now Zimbabwe – as Christian missionaries in the 1960s.

As a child, she did not know she was Stateless until she joined HGM Primary School. Here, some teachers, whether intentionally or not, would mention that she belonged to a ‘strange tribe’. The reality of the situation hit her when she was in Standard Seven in 2013 and needed to register for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination.

She realised that she didn’t have a birth certificate and, therefore, could not register. However, many pupils didn’t have birth certificates, and the government allowed them to register using clinic cards.

She sat for her KCPE exam in 2014 and scored 276, though she believes she could have done better.

Though she could have gone on to high school, her statelessness came back to haunt her. Because of her lack of identification papers, she could not apply for a bursary or scholarship.

“Instead of stressing my parents over money I knew they didn’t have, I decided to repeat Standard Eight in 2015,” she says.

At HGM Kinoo Primary School, changes had taken place, and they had a new headmaster who was keen to help members of the Shona community. During the second term, the school organised a book-harvesting event, and the chief guest was MP Kimani Ichung’wah, the area MP. The event was meant to get money to buy more books for the school.

They prepared a Kikuyu song and picked Dube to be the soloist.

“Having grown up in Kinoo, I was quite fluent in the language,” she says.

During the presentation, the headmaster mentioned Dube’s predicament to Ichung’wah and why she had to repeat Standard Eight. The MP publicly announced that he would sponsor her education through secondary school if she performed well.

That year, she scored 346 marks in the KCPE and got admission to Lamu Girls at the Coast. Given the expenses involved in travelling to the Coast, she decided to go instead to Senior Chief Koinange, which was nearby. During admission in 2016, she had to lie that her mother had applied for the birth certificate, but it was not ready yet.

The school allowed her to register, and Ichung’wah honoured his word and paid her fees through her secondary education. She excelled in her studies, scoring top grades.

In the third term of Form One, she was picked for an exchange programme in the United States, but she had to turn it down because she didn’t have a passport. “I lied to the teacher that I could not travel due to personal and family reasons,” she recalls.

The demons of statelessness caught up with her again in 2018 while in Form Three and needed to register for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam. She still had no documents, but this time, there was a national conversation on stateless communities.

A man claiming to be from the Immigration department visited the community and promised to help them get the crucial documents at a fee of Sh3,000. “I convinced my parents that we should look for the money and get these vital documents,” she says.

She used the birth certificate that she got to register for the KCSE exam. In 2019, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and UNHCR visited the community to verify their documents.

“They had already started the ‘I Belong Campaign’ that was fighting for the rights of the Stateless communities,” she says.

Upon verification, the two organisations found out that the documents given to the community were fake.

In July 2019, together with other members of the Shoni community, they got valid birth certificates with the help of KHRC and UNHCR.

Dube scored a B in KCSE and was admitted to the University of Nairobi.

Again, she could not apply for financial assistance from HELB, and even admission was a struggle because she didn’t have an identification card. With the help of KHRC and UNHCR, she wrote to the then Cabinet Secretary for Interior Fred Matiang’i and the then Education CS George Magoha, explaining her case.

The ministries directed the university to admit her and Ichung’wah agreed to pay her university fees.

In 2020, she joined the university.

In December 2020, during the Jamhuri Day celebrations, President Uhuru Kenyatta finally gave the Shona community a Certificate of Citizenship. She was among those who received the certificate of registration.

She is still actively fighting for the rights of other stateless communities in Kenya like the Makonde and the Pemba.

“Though there is progress, there is still work to be done,” she says and is eager to take the fight beyond Kenya.