2 - The History of Publics in Mombasa

Summary

Chapter 2 provides the historical antecedents for everyday publics in Mombasa in the 2010s. It brings an original perspective on the city’s political history, by looking at how forms of rule and belonging emerged through interactions between people and media. Through waves of foreign occupation, Mombasa’s residents navigated different foreign and domestic claims to authority, which were presented and contested through government structures, face-to-face baraza, radio and print. From its early days, the city was marked by migration, trade and a cosmopolitan community. The transition to independence invoked new ideas and experiences of marginalisation as coastal communities. This informed post-independence patterns in citizen–state relations, in which ideas of political belonging and advantage were tied to religion, ethnicity, place of origin and race. The chapter concludes by commenting on the communication landscape of the 2010s, and situating the people’s parliaments, as this book’s empirical focus, within this landscape.