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‘Shauri ya Sera Kali’: the colonial regime of urban housing in Kenya to 1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

ALISON HAY  and
RICHARD HARRIS
ALISON HAY
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S 4K1
RICHARD HARRIS
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S 4K1
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Abstract

The social relationships of housing tenure shape urban life. One of the most peculiar tenure regimes emerged in the towns of East and Central Africa during the colonial period. In accordance with the colonial policy of trusteeship, employers and municipalities were together responsible for housing all permanently employed Africans, who constituted the majority in most urban centres. Contemporaries noted that employers and municipalities commonly failed to do their job, a judgement that historians have endorsed. In fact, their contribution varied greatly from place to place and, though generally insufficient, was still substantial. This paternalistic tenure regime created dependency and open-ended commitments that could not be met.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 504 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 In addition to Kenya, we refer to the territories then known as Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Northern and Southern Rhodesia.

2 Because Africans lived at much higher densities than other groups in cities, they did not occupy as much territory as their numbers might suggest.

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13 Valuable archival documents include the following: National Archives, Colonial Office records (CO) 892/7/1, A.E. Basden, ‘Report on the problem of housing government officials in Kenya’, Nairobi, 1926, typescript; National Archives of Kenya, University of Syracuse microfilm collection (NAKS) reel 28, file 2246, Eldoret, town clerk, ‘Memorandum. Native location scheme, Eldoret’, 1 Jul. 1930, typescript; Rhodes House (RH) MSS Afr. t.13, E.R. St A. Davies, ‘Some problems arising from the conditions of housing and employment of natives in Nairobi, 18 August 1939’, typescript; NAKS reel 74, file 2800 correspondence, P.C. Nyanza, F. Hewett, ‘A survey of government African quarters’, typescript, Kisumu, 1940, 12pp, enclosed with F. Hewett, senior health inspector, Kisumu, to medical officer of health, Kisumu. We have also made use of some later official reports, notably: CO 892/7/1, Kenya, ‘A short historical review of the salary scales and terms and conditions of Africans’, 21 Feb. 1953, cyclostyled, 7pp; CO 822/1946, C.W. Seed and W.M. Woodhouse, ‘The report of the housing mission’, 1 Sep. 1961, typescript, 19pp; RH MSS Perham, box 460, file 1, G.M. Wilson, ‘Housing in the Nairobi African locations. Summary’, mimeo typescript; RH, MSS Afr. s.919(1), Mombasa Social Survey Papers 1956–58 (MSSP), N. Burudi, ‘Housing and family census. Government, municipal and employer-built houses on Mombasa island’, mimeo typescript, Mombasa, Jun. 1957, 25pp; RH, MSS Afr. s.919(1), MSSP, G.M. Wilson, ‘Kongawea’, mimeo typescript, Feb. 1957, 15pp; RH, MSS Afr. s.919(1), MSSP, G.M. Wilson, ‘Temporary African housing – a comparison’, mimeo typescript, 1957, 6pp. We drew, especially, on Colonial Office records at the Public Record Office (now National Archives), London, together with private papers at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and at Rhodes House, Oxford. The records of the colonial administration in Kenya allowed us to document the situation in smaller urban centres. The originals are housed in the Kenyan National Archives. We consulted the microfilm copies that are available at Syracuse University.

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35 Kenya, Medical Department, Housing of African Natives, 9–10.

36 Kenya, Annual Report on the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya for the Year 1951 (Nairobi, 1952), 67; Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1951 (Nairobi, 1952), 22.

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38 CO 892/5/4, Okeno Sare, Memo to the East Africa Royal Commission, handwritten, 1953.

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40 Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 209, 217.

41 St A. Davies, ‘Some problems arising’, Schedule B.

42 See also Hake, African Metropolis, 51.

43 Basden, ‘Report on the problem of housing’.

44 Kenya, ‘Short historical review’. From 1943, Africans in higher grades were required to pay, and by 1945 this was expected of all African employees. Those European and Asian civil servants who were housed received free accommodation until 1935. Seed and Woodhouse, ‘Housing mission’, 2, 4.

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46 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1929 (Nairobi, 1930), 129. There are indications that later PWD housing was much improved. See Parkes, ‘Contrasts in the Nairobi locations’.

47 Hewett, ‘A survey of government African quarters’.

48 Baker, ‘Citizenship on the septic fringe’, 286.

49 Kenya, Report of Committee of Inquiry into Labour Unrest at Mombasa. Parts I and II (Nairobi, 1945), 87.

50 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1925 (Nairobi, 1925), 63; Baker, ‘Citizenship on the septic fringe’, 287; Colonial Office, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya. Report for 1922 (London, 1924), 9.

51 Hake, African Metropolis, 256 n. 15. Hake's source was the records of the Railways administration.

52 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1929, 129; Kenya, Annual Report on Native Affairs, 1937, 215.

53 Kenya, Report of the Committee on African Wages (Nairobi, 1954), Appendix D.

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56 School of Oriental and African Studies Archives, Hake Papers, PPMS 46, box 37, file 4:5A, Hake, ‘Housing and industry in Nairobi’, Nairobi, n.d., roneoed.

57 Hake, African Metropolis, 257 n. 7.

58 Baker, Citizenship on the septic fringe', 239.

59 CO 822/588 ‘What Nairobi is doing to house Africans’, East African Standard, 22 May 1953.

60 Ibid., 15.

61 Colonial Office, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya. Report for 1922, 6.

62 Kenya, Annual Report, 1931.

63 Quoted by Hake, African Metropolis, 42. Similar language was used by Leys, a critical observer of Kenyan affairs, in 1924. Norman Leys, Kenya (London, 1924), 273.

64 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1925, 63; Hake, African Metropolis, 46; Kenya, Annual Report, 1931, 31.

65 Hake, African Metropolis, 46, 50. Obviously, these figures are all rough estimates. The discrepancy in the estimates for 1939 between Hake's approximation (41,000) and St Davies' dubiously precise figure (36,147) may be a measure of the number of Africans who were neither legally employed nor the official dependents of those who were.

66 St A. Davies, ‘Some problems’; see also Stren, Housing the Urban Poor, 195–6.

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75 The danger was real. See, for example, Baker, ‘Citizenship on the septic fringe’, 335.

76 Okun, G., ‘African housing’, [letter], East African Standard, 22 Jun. 1954, 2Google Scholar; Parker, ‘Political and social aspects’, 83–7, 99; Baker, ‘Citizenship on the septic fringe’, 311–12, 316, 321.

77 Baker, ‘Citizenship on the septic fringe’, 287–8; ‘Town housing problem in reverse’, East African Standard, 6 Jul. 1955, 4.

78 RH, MSS Afr. s.919(1), MSSP, G.M. Wilson, ‘A general summary of African housing, Nairobi’, typescript, 5.

79 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 220.

80 Ibid., 186; Parker, ‘Political and social aspects’, 77, 80–1, 82; van Zwanenberg, ‘History and theory of urban poverty’, 27–8, 34; Hake, African Metropolis, 112.

81 Hake, African Metropolis, 147–9.

82 ‘Housing targets plan for all towns’, East African Standard, 11 Dec. 1953, 30.

83 Lonsdale, ‘Town life in colonial Kenya’; [Lord] Hailey, W.M., Native Administration in the British African Territories. Part I (London, 1950), 179–81Google Scholar.

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85 Ibid., quoted in Baker, ‘Citizenship at the septic fringe’, 46.

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87 Ibid., 469.

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91 Kenya, Report of the Commission Appointed to Examine the Labour Conditions in Mombasa, 1939; Kenya, Report of the Committee on Inquiry into Labour Unrest at Mombasa, Parts I and II; Cooper, African Waterfront.

92 Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 216, 253. For a discussion of the contrasting structures of propertied power in the two cities see Lonsdale, ‘Town life in colonial Kenya’.

93 Parker, ‘Political and social aspects’, 103.

94 NAKS reel 57, file 2246, Kisumu, Township Committee, Minutes, typescript, 7 Jun. 1922, 1 and 6 Sep. 1922, 3; cf. Anyumba, Kisumu Town, 139. For details see Alison Hay, ‘Housing policy in colonial Kenya. A study of three provincial towns’, McMaster University MA thesis, 2004, 116–27.

95 NAKS reel 74, file 2800, correspondence, P.C. Nyanza, district commissioner, Kisumu-Londiani, to provincial commissioner, Nyanza, and the commissioner of local government, Nairobi, 30 Oct. 1939.

96 Hay, ‘Housing policy in colonial Kenya’, 102.

97 NAKS reel 92, file 2246, Nakuru. Finance and General Purposes Committee, Minutes of the 49th. Meeting, typescript, 26 Apr. 1933, 1.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid., Minutes of the 48th. Meeting, 15 Mar. 1933, 1.

100 NAKS reel 92, file 2246, Nakuru. Works and Health Committee, Minutes of the 58th. Meeting, 11 Apr. 1934, 2.

101 NAKS reel 28, file 2246, Eldoret, Municipal Board, ‘The Eldoret (native location) by-laws’, 1930, 1–3.

102 Hay, ‘Housing policy in colonial Kenya’, 108–9.

103 NAKS reel 28, file 2246, Eldoret, town clerk, ‘Memorandum’, 1–4; Eldoret, Municipal Board, Minutes of the 10th. Meeting, 23 Jan. 1931, 3.

104 Ibid., Eldoret, Municipal Board, Annual Report (Eldoret, 1931), 4.

105 Ibid. But the claim was not absurd. Hay has estimated that in 1931 this scheme housed between a quarter and a third of Eldoret's African population. Hay, ‘Housing policy in colonial Kenya’, 109. Since the latter included dependants and unemployed workers, and since some employed workers (including domestics) were housed by employers, the initial scheme must have housed the majority of employed Africans.

106 Kenya, Annual Report, 1931, 17.

107 For historical surveys see Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, ch. 5; Parker, ‘Political and social aspects’, 75–108; van Zwanenberg, ‘History and theory of urban poverty’.

108 Parker, ‘Political and social aspects’, 76, 77, 79, 93, 95; van Zwanenberg, ‘History and theory of urban poverty’, 31–2; Colonial Office, Report for 1922, 6; Hake, African Metropolis, 129–30.

109 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1925, 34; Hake, African Metropolis, 130.

110 UK Colonial Office, Report of the Kenya Land Commission, 169.

111 Hake, African Metropolis, 132.

112 Kenya, African Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1925, 63. By the mid-1950s later extensions had raised Kariokor's nominal capacity to about twice that number.

113 Ibid.; Hake, African Metropolis, 45.

114 Hake, African Metropolis, 51, 53. By 1955 the combined bedspace capacity of Kariokor and Shauri Moyo had reached 5,100. Wilson, ‘Housing in the Nairobi African locations’, 1.

115 Stren, Housing the Urban Poor in Africa, 125–7.

116 RH MSS Afr. S.919(1), MSSP, ‘By-laws nos. 92–98 of the Municipal Board of Mombasa. Single storey village layouts’, typescript, 5pp, in Mombasa Social Survey; Stren, Housing the Urban Poor in Africa, 131–2; Cooper, African Waterfront, 183.

117 Wilson, ‘Kongawea’, 5–6.

118 Ibid., 13.

119 Cooper, African Waterfront, 183–4.

120 Leys, Kenya, 277.

121 RH MSS Afr. S.919(1), MSSPapers, G.M. Wilson, ‘African housing in municipalities, townships and training centres. An appreciation of the Vasey Report of 1950’, mimeo typescript, 1957, 13.

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