‘Only the people can defend this struggle’: the politics of the everyday, extrajudicial executions and civil society in Mathare, Kenya

Abstract

Though a perennial problem in postcolonial Kenya, extrajudicial executions (EJE) show few signs of ending and in recent years are even accelerating amongst young men in informal settlements. Avenues for legal, institutional and civil society redress, nominally expanded in recent years, display an ongoing tendency towards disconnection from the grassroots. A case study from Mathare, Nairobi, seeks explanations for the lack of urgency in addressing EJE and also the limited effectiveness of responses to them that are rooted in the political economy of interests of civil society actors, which tends to perpetuate these ‘excluded spaces’ of the slum. The authors do so, however, by exploring one particular struggle to show how frustration with civil society is being used by social justice activists to articulate ideas of ‘everyday’ violence to mobilise for change that disrupts the apparent normalisation of EJE

Protecting the Citizenry—or an Instrument for Surveillance? The Development of Community-oriented Policing in Kenya

“…In some documented cases, police officers have contributed to crime rather than its prevention and detection [34][35][36][37]. In interviews, residents and community-based organizations in Mathare, an informal settlement in Nairobi, have reported extraordinary police brutality and frequent cases of extrajudicial killings ( [38] see, also [39][40][41]). Police officers have been seen primarily as corrupt and brutal criminals who protect the elite rather than ordinary members of the public.…”

‘When the Numbers Stop Adding’: Imagining Futures in Perilous Presents Among Youth in Nairobi Ghettos

“…Shocked, I asked my friend Kingi, who had sent me the What's App message, if the police had killed him as they had done many of Fake's friends in recent years. Kenyan police are notorious for high levels of extrajudicial violence against crime and terror suspects (MSJC 2017;Jones et al 2017;Osse 2016;Van Stapele 2016). It did not make sense, Fake was a 'reformed' man, as he had told me repeatedly and with which he had meant he was no longer involved in street muggings.…”

‘Arms for mobility’: policing partnerships and material exchanges in Nairobi, Kenya

“…5 For decades, Nairobi has faced high crime rates and recurrent terrorist attacks. As a result, the city hosts a myriad of various public and private security providers and ample scholarly research outlines how such actors operate across diverse terrains, from the informal settlements (van Stapele 2015, Price et al 2016, Skilling 2016, Jones et al 2018, to the middle-class housing estates (Smith 2015), to the wealthier parts of North-western Nairobi (Colona and Diphoorn 2017). In addition to the numerous forms of community policing, ranging from formalised community policing forums, vigilante-type groups, gangs, and neighbourhood watches, two main actors, which also lie at the heart of this article, are the National Police Service (NPS) and the private security industry.…”

“…Broadly speaking, the NPS suffers from a poor reputation, described as being inactive (Musoi et al 2013), incapable to deal with crime, in cahoots with criminals (Omenya and Lubaale 2012), and generally corrupt, ill-trained, and under-equipped. Furthermore, various forms of documentation show that police violence and extrajudicial killings have increased in Kenya throughout the past years (MSJC 2017, Jones et al 2018. This was particularly so during the presidential elections that dominated the political scene in the second half of 2017.…”

“…This patrol in May 2015 is one of the several patrols that I accompanied during my ethnographic fieldwork on policing partnerships in Nairobi, Kenya. Similar to other parts of the world, Kenya is characterised by a pluralised landscape of policing, wherein we can identify a range of actors engaged in the provision of security, especially within the larger urban centres (see Anderson 2002, Ruteere and Pommerolle 2003, Rasmussen 2010, Smith 2015, van Stapele 2015, Price et al 2016, Skilling 2016, Kimari 2017, Jones et al 2018, Schuberth 2018, Colona 2019.…”